What have you picked/planted today?

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Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I've been munching fresh Autumn fruiting raspberries all day :eek:
Absolutely delicious in this late Sunshine :)

Brambles yesterday and loads of fresh bittercress as I weeded as I passed flower beds. Looks like I'm going to get a haul of fruit from the fuchsias too :cool:

M
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
I need to take some more raspberry cuttings and see if rooting them works. I would love some but the dormer and black raspberry plants died in the heat of summer. I had them in full sun. I have one variety made in Mississippi for the heat - I think it is the only variety that can, but is hard to find as the nurserys have not had time to get them going - it is a very recent development. I have forgotten its name.

I would make raspberry jam for tarts. I have lots of blackberries but raspberries are better for that I think.

Gathered eggs, and will pick okra and peppers (4 kinds).
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
My raspberries have inaded the lawn! Things are breeding runners at a ferocious rate.

Today I boiled a pound of chillies in half a gallon of vinegar with two whole heads of garlic. My sinuses are clear!
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Mine came up through the tiny narrow sand filled spaces between the slabs in the greenhouse floor :rolleyes:
Determined kind of plants, aren't they ? :)
Round here there are masses of clumps of wild growing ones too. Along side the burn, at the edge of the woodland paths, etc.,

Your chillied vinegar sounds interesting :D What are you going to use it for ?

M
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
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Mercia
Goes through a liquidiser and becomes a hot sauce like tobasco. Far too hot for me, but BB loves it.
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Would love to make any kind of chili sauce - I have siracha with lots of my foods. Only my wife cannot take anything hot...

Grinding the fish, white trout, with shrimp - both cooked and raw, for fish cakes last evening. They were OK, (made with potato and onion and egg), with tarter sauce, even good. The white trout are in numbers, and just starting to net shrimp - this is a mix of 2 parts fish to 1 shrimp, and the fish roe.

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Herbalist1

Settler
Jun 24, 2011
585
1
North Yorks
Hi Toddy
i read that you are expecting a good crop of fruit from your fuchsias. Are these plants you've harvested from before and are they well flavoured? I've found them very variable - sometimes good but often very watery and flavourless.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
One plant must be eight years old, and it's fruits are as sweet as grapes :) the others are relative newcomers and so far I've only had a few fruits in the last couple of years. They weren't as sweet, but they were sodden wet years.
They make good jam.

M
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Goes through a liquidiser and becomes a hot sauce like tobasco. Far too hot for me, but BB loves it.

I rather suspect himself might like that….and I have a stash of chillis in the freezer that could be doing with being used up :)
Do you sweeten it or spice it with anything else ?
M
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
Vitis riparia Var. Valiant. Pickers came and went today, whole crop sold. The birds got NOTHING!
Juice (approx 3 lbs = 1 liter juice) and jelly/syrup. Good sugar and taste, 3 weeks early.

Want to take some vines to try some fall cuttings/starts, just for the experiment.
Usually do all in spring (50-100) to sell in the local summer market.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Hi Rob, hope things are OK. Are the grapes used for some gourmet thing? I used to commercially pick huckleberries in Hungry Horse Mt, South of you, they got a good price as wild gourmet and were shipped all over for high end food. Are you too high for cherries? The Flathead cherries were the best in the world, and my uncle had a cherry orchard in The Okanagan. Amazing fruit, but we are too far south for them. Like raspberries but for this new one developed.

I planted some 3 year old carrot seed, and 7 Savoy cabbage seedlings. Weeded and thinned the kale and collard seedlings. Also in filled some beets where they had failed to sprout, and some 3 year old bock-choy seeds.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
I'm looking forward to the sugar cane coming in next month (not my own, but in the area) as well as the satsumas.
 

george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
I have not had a piece of sugarcane since I was a kid in Afghanistan where lengths of it would be sold for people to chew. Do people chew it much where you are. We also would get whole coconuts, something I have not had in many years - my father would always pick one up on occasions, I think because he would get one as a treat when was a child 80 years ago. We also would get nuts in the shell, I think old fashioned things nowadays.

I planted 3 satsumas this spring when Walmart had the remaining ones at half price and they have 2-7 ripening one on each. Santa, do you garden? Kumquats are getting full sized fruit, lemons full sized. I will love some good home made marmalade when they are ready. I will use them all to make a garden marmalade.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Hmm never had raw cane to try, sounds good though. One of the nicer odd treats I've eaten though was licorice root. I like licorice anyway (Pontifract cakes :p ) but the root was really good too. A friend grew it in his garden, takes about three years to mature but lovely. Another old fashioned treat that one of my Grans used to make and was a real favourite was candied angelica. She mainly made it for going into cakes but knew I loved and would have a paper poke for me when she made up a batch. Quite fancy some now if truth be told.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
I have not had a piece of sugarcane since I was a kid in Afghanistan where lengths of it would be sold for people to chew. Do people chew it much where you are......

Yes the ones of us who are old enough to remember, but not as much as when I was a kid growing up in south Mississippi. Back then their were always local fields growing cane and cooking syrup. It still shows up in full lengths this time of year and most people buy a couple of stalks to decorate with for Halloween and/or Thanksgiving. We'll cut it up and chew it later.

Yeah I do some gardening, but not much. Mostly containerized. Tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, banana peppers, etc. We did a lot more when I was a kid and we plowed a few acres with the horses.

Hmm never had raw cane to try, sounds good though. .....

Yes it is. It's quite tough and fibrous though even after you peel it.
 
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george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
Angelica - I would like to try some, used in absinthe, doesn't it have some drug like qualities which made the absinthe finally outlawed? (wormwood) Red should grow it, was used in mead in old times. I think so many of the old garden things are disappearing at an amazing rate.

I am hanging paneling on a wall today - I do not look forward to it - and this afternoon my old partner who lived in the bush with us those years is stopping by - always some reminiscing. Guns, Money, and Mushrooms - as the magazine article we were in had as its headline. Jail for moose poaching, drunk Indian woman shooting out the tires of the van, exploding camper with 100% facial hair removal, grizzly and black bears up close and dangerous, wild rivers to ford, glaciers, mountains, trackless wilderness, remote camps, crazy people by the ton, working fish canneries, long hair and beards and going into town rarely being all 'bushed' and people getting out of your way, carrying guns, hanging with buyers in tents and their $30,000 cash on their waist, Northern lights, dogs hunting mice in the rotten snow, fishing for dinner, eating bannock cooked over the fire daily, dogs getting porcupined, all that for 4 years. Different times - having to be totally self reliant, working 16 hour days, and then sitting in camp for days under a tarp in cold rain - keeping your beer next to your body wile drinking it so it will not freeze between sips......

The rig, My wife and Will, Alaska

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george47

Banned
Aug 14, 2015
194
0
North Gulf of Mexico
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From my porch looking to the cottage a couple days ago. To the left is the brush lining the bank of the bayou, my docks and a trail back in there - and the first planter showing is 10 foot long, two foot wide, foot deep; an asparagus bed (like most of my stuff, salvaged from a house for sale's garden) with trellised Muscadine grapes at the left end. (bamboo trellis which has fallen over - but holes dug for 8 ft wooden posts and a wire to hold it now it is established.) Past it to the left is another grape with 20 foot of trellis, wood poles and wire, just planted this spring and doing well. Scattered in these planters - the soil being prone to saltwater inundation when tropical storms come, and raised planters can be flushed with fresh water after flooding - the plan anyway, are 2 large blackberry vines with 20 foot spans of wire trellis each - a pomegranate, a lowquat, a wisteria that runs a wire 30 foot to the cottage porch (just started up the wire) a kiwi, and a fig. I am going to build another 5 planters, we salvage wood and I have the truck loaded with 2X6, 2 foot long boards that were torn off a porch.

I have begun propagating raspberries. This spring I found a raspberry developed in Mississippi, for Southern Mississippi climate. It is just new and the one I planted thrived, making 15 foot long vines, skinny ones, but surviving well. Raspberries do not do well here - they die in the hot summer as I have found from 3 attempts. Blackberries thrive and I have extensive rows of them, but want raspberries as they flavor and tiny seeds are fantastic in cooking. I buried tips of the vines which rooted and now want 3 planters of them out in the lawn. The other two planters I am not sure about. Of course a hurricane flood could kill them, raspberries supposedly being very delicate to salt - but give it a try.

Most of the little planters - raised beds, 2 ft X 2 ft X 1 ft deep, are hidden by the brush clumps I left - but at the end, by the cottage is my banana grove, they are 17 foot tall, to give some scale. Only 1 banana has fruit, the very hard freezes of last winter killing the rest back. Bananas being biannual you have to wrap them very well, and the freezes went on too long for my wrappings.

So berries today. Build planters, fix wheelbarrow, get loads of compost and dirt. If the rain holds off. Cooler weather is beginning and it is dark and windy out.

This is making the planters that are out there now, salvaged wood

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My veg gardens are limping along. The first purple potato has broken the soil. I use fancy purple potatoes from the grocery store - they work great but take for ever to sprout. Most of my kale just never came up - even after 2 plantings, also the beans got attacked by something, as did the fall cucumbers - although they have tiny fruits. The okra keep putting out a couple, and the peppers are laden - although the fall fruits are smaller than the summer ones, but still a vital part of my gumbo soups. Turnips going great - I have the regular purple top, and then one grown just for the greens, turnip greens being a very popular Soul food thing.

The broccoli, cauliflower and B sprouts are not thriving, but are there. May have been too hot when I began them, a hard crop for the fall I find. Lettuce is going well. Mostly Black seed Simpson.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Angelica - I would like to try some, used in absinthe, doesn't it have some drug like qualities which made the absinthe finally outlawed? (wormwood) Red should grow it,

Red does grow Artemisia absinthium (wormwood) as well as Angelica. In quantity :) Brilliant vermifuge, insecticide hearthand herb. It contains a ketone called thujone which is psychoactive but not really a hallucinogen. It certainly can cause seizures and death.
 

bigbear

Full Member
May 1, 2008
1,061
210
Yorkshire
Today we harvested our firat cauliflower, and the last of our green beans and took the plants down to make way for our garlic next weekend.
also brought home lettuce, blackberries, apples, swede, turnip, and sprouts, plus sweet pea flowers for decoration.feels like autumn is here.
 

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